


The Art of Tying the Cravat

by Kainosite



Category: The Scarlet Pimpernel - All Media Types, The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy
Genre: Banter, M/M, Politics, Ties & Cravats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25506328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kainosite/pseuds/Kainosite
Summary: Five times Percy Blakeney retied Chauvelin’s cravat, and one time Chauvelin actually let him.
Relationships: Percy Blakeney/Armand Chauvelin
Comments: 8
Kudos: 30
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	1. La Cravate en Fleur

**Author's Note:**

  * For [girodelles_waifu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girodelles_waifu/gifts).



> _“You haven't forgotten, Percy, by any chance...?” Sir Andrew suggested._
> 
> _“I think not. You mean, my dear friend Monsieur Chambertin, beg pardon, Chauvelin?” Blakeney rejoined gaily. “No, by gad, I had not forgotten him. I am pining for his agreeable society. I wonder now whether during his last stay in London he has learned how to tie his cravat as a gentleman should.”_
> 
> ~ _Sir Percy Leads the Band_ , Baroness Orczy
> 
>   
> Content warning for the Terror.
> 
> With gratitude to my beta J, who as ever did a fantastic job under trying circumstances.

The President of the Board of Trade had been fulminating for the better part of twenty minutes about the recent events in Saint Domingue, and Chauvelin’s patience was wearing thin.

He was maintaining his façade of urbane detachment only by privately reflecting, as he often did at these gatherings, on how much more agreeable Lord Hawkesbury would be, and how much improved as a conversationalist, if he no longer had a head. These English nobles shared all the vices of Chauvelin’s own class, all the arrogance and idleness and vapidity and venality, but with none of the redeeming elegance or wit. Not that _politesse_ had been enough to save the French aristos from their richly deserved comeuppance, but it had on occasion been known to save the odd dinner party from the likes of Lord Hawkesbury.

Really, if anyone should find himself wavering in his republican convictions, he had but to spend a few hours in the company of the British aristocracy to restore him to patriotic fervor.

The festivities that had prompted Chauvelin’s observations were ostensibly being held for the purpose of introducing Hawkesbury’s son to a more suitable girl than the one he had inconveniently fixed upon marrying, a young pauperess with but £10,000 to her name. One could build a frigate for that sum, or feed three hundred working families for a year, but perhaps feeling that the President of the Board of Trade ought to be driving a harder bargain, Lord Hawkesbury had vetoed the match. Father and son had been at loggerheads ever since, and this pedestrian domestic drama, which could be found replicated down to the last detail in every tanner’s shop in Shoreditch, had been rendered by the involvement of a title the fascination of English society for the better part of three weeks. This was in itself ample justification for the abolition of the aristocracy, in Chauvelin’s opinion, but he was prepared to suffer through the endless speculation on young Robert’s marriage prospects for the sake of his mission. If the _bon ton_ weren’t preoccupied with this they would simply be fixated on some other inane melodrama, and as long as it kept their gaze off the little sable-clad man who stalked the edges of their glittering galas and observed them with a predatory patience, it was all to the good.

Unfortunately, Lord Hawkesbury was not without certain predatory tendencies of his own, and he had realized that with the French ambassador a captive audience at his country house in Surrey, he had the perfect opportunity to pounce. Chauvelin had not come to this ball to discuss politics, but he could hardly dismiss his gracious host. Which was why for the past twenty minutes he has been pinned between the refreshments table and a rather vulgar marble Daphne while his lordship peppered him with a series of hostile questions.

What the devil was the French government playing at in Saint Domingue? Did it not understand the vital necessity of slavery to both French and British interests in the Caribbean? Did the Convention have any idea what this insurrection was doing to the coffee and sugar markets? Did they lack the basic common sense to grasp that the revolt needed to be put down, brutally and urgently, or was it merely their courage that was lacking? And what in the name of God were they thinking, granting a pack of damned mulattoes citizenship? Didn’t they realize it was only going to give the slaves _ideas_?

As the rebelling slaves had, at last report, liberated a third of the island, it seemed to Chauvelin that the situation had progressed rather beyond the point of giving anyone ideas. Besides, to the extent that the ideas of the French Revolution had drifted across the Atlantic to wash ashore on that unhappy isle, the slaves appeared to have adopted three very good ones, to wit, _liberté_ , _égalité_ , and _fraternité_ , and Chauvelin wished them every good fortune in bringing them to bear. But to put forward the first argument would only prolong this unpleasant discussion, and to make the second would likely see him ejected from the house. The notion had a distinct appeal, but alas, he was here on business and could not indulge himself beyond a brief fancy about what color his lordship’s face might turn if he said it. Chauvelin gave Hawkesbury a tight smile.

“I shall certainly convey your depth of feeling to my government,” he said.

He was about to make another attempt to shift the conversation onto some more congenial topic, such as the evils of papistry or how much better English weather had been in Lord Hawkesbury’s day – not that Chauvelin could attest to the latter point, but he was certainly prepared to concede that it left much to be desired in his own – when a cork came flying past his ear to strike his lordship squarely in the forehead.

“Demmed sorry!” someone said behind him.

Chauvelin turned to find a personage resplendently attired in one of the ridiculous wide-lapeled coats of that era. This specimen, in satin, was patterned with broad stripes of gold and indigo, set off by a sea-green waistcoat and expansive ruffles of immaculate white lace at cuffs and collar. Breeches of cream satin and a pair of golden watch seals completed the ensemble. The popinjay in the striped coat was flanked by two companions in similar costume, all three of them wearing sheepish expressions and a general air of apology. The one in the center held up a frothing champagne bottle, evidently the source of the missile.

“The cork was stuck, y’see, and we hadn’t a corkscrew, so Tony here insisted on prying at it with his dagger and the infernal thing just went ‘pop’!” The dandy gestured demonstratively with the bottle, sloshing champagne in an arc that missed Chauvelin by inches. “Demmed ill-mannered of it to pop at our host, what?”

His two comrades tittered loyally at this attempted witticism. Chauvelin was at first inclined to attribute it to nerves, but taking in their vacuous expressions he decided that this was probably what passed for humor in their circle.

Lord Hawkesbury’s diatribe had been so long, and so loud, and so spittle-flecked, that it was impossible to believe Chauvelin had been its only victim. One was almost inclined to wonder if some human artifice lay behind that well-aimed cork. But the faces of the three fops were entirely guileless. Chauvelin considered for a moment and then dismissed the notion. No one who so slavishly adhered to the fashions of the day, which seemed designed expressly for the purpose of proving that nothing was so absurd that _le beau monde_ could not hallow it, possessed the subtly of mind to arrange that sort of “accident”.

The dandy in the striped coat raised a lorgnette and peered at Lord Hawkesbury solicitously. “You’re not hurt, my lord?”

“No harm done,” said Hawkesbury, although there were arctic undercurrents to his tone and he was sporting an angry red mark in the center of his forehead. “Monsieur Chauvelin, allow me to present Sir Percy Blakeney, Baronet. Sir Percy, the French ambassador.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Chauvelin said with absolute sincerity, and not merely on account of the cork, for Blakeney was intimately connected with the very person he had come here to find. He bowed politely, and then looked up, and up again, into a pair of indolent blue eyes.

For the past nine months the salons of Paris had been humming with speculation about what could possibly have lured Marguerite St. Just from the City of Light to this sullen isle of puddings and Puritanism. For a lively, intelligent girl of sound republican principles to trade the boards of the Comédie Française and the sparkling circles of intellectual Europe for a marriage to some stodgy English milord defied all comprehension. A sudden romantic impulse, a brief fling with a handsome face – that could be understood easily enough. Such affairs were commonplace. But to go so far as _marriage_! To throw over all her old friends and loyalties and move to _England_ , with its prudish morals and atrocious cuisine – what on earth had possessed her?

Now Chauvelin had before him an answer, of a sort.

Sir Percy Blakeney was very tall and very blond and by all accounts very stupid, a quality which might perhaps have an appeal of its own to a woman of Marguerite St. Just’s intelligence. A shrewder man might have felt threatened by her intellect, but a creature such as Blakeney could presumably be relied upon to pant after her with the thoughtless devotion of a large dog. And if young love should fail, his fortune would remain. Marguerite was no adventuress; Chauvelin knew her well enough to think better of her than that. But she was too clever not to hedge her bets.

As a matter of general principle, Chauvelin took no more interest in Marguerite’s marriage than that of Lord Hawkesbury’s son. The struggle currently being waged in France had for its stakes nothing less than the future of humanity; against that backdrop, these little battles of the heart and purse strings could not help but fade into insignificance. Marguerite St. Just had been a friend, but she had made her bed when she decided to marry an English aristocrat and for all Chauvelin cared she could lie in it. But he had quickly realized that if he was to succeed in his mission to learn the true identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel, he was going to require an accomplice.

Whether it stemmed from their fear and loathing of the republican government he represented, the instinctual antipathy of the young and silly for the middle-aged and somber, or a vague but entirely accurate sense that he would cheer their deaths, the young lordlings he’d come to England to spy upon shunned his company. He had some names already – unless he was very much mistaken, the twit with the dagger was Lord Antony Dewhurst, one of the younger sons of the Duke of Exeter and a known associate of the Scarlet Pimpernel – but he couldn’t get close enough to map out the network of connections that would lead him to their leader.

Marguerite Blakeney, on the other hand, was the sun around which the gilded youth of English society orbited. She was reported to be unhappy in her marriage – perhaps dashing good looks and ridiculously ostentatious coats were already losing their charm, or perhaps after nine months she was beginning to tire of the company of the British aristocracy. Chauvelin could well believe it – it had taken him all of five minutes. And perhaps a girl who found herself bored and dissatisfied with her new life of stultifying luxury might remember those higher principles to which she had once subscribed, and agree to do her country a great service.

Chauvelin had come to this ball to judge the rumors for himself, and to see if circumstances seemed favorable to make an approach.

For his part, Percy Blakeney appeared to be studying Chauvelin as intently as Chauvelin was studying him. After a moment he winced, and his straight, firm brows drew together as if in pain.

“My good Monsieur– er, Chaubertin, was it?”

“Chauvelin,” Chauvelin and Hawkesbury said together.

“Of course, of course, a thousand pardons, Monsieur Chauvelin. I touch upon what I fear may be a delicate subject – anything to do with necks, y’know – but I profess to a great affection for your unhappy country, and to see her represented thus – no, no, it simply will not do. I speak, sir, of your cravat.”

“My cravat,” Chauvelin said blankly.

There was, as far as he was aware, absolutely nothing to be said about it. Indeed, he took some pains that this should be so. Chauvelin kept his linen clean, tidy, and as blandly conservative as possible. Each day he tied his cravat with the same knot he’d been taught as a little boy in his parents’ chateau, a style refined yet dull enough that it had hitherto passed without comment in all the circles in which he moved, whether at the Court of St James's or at the Convention. Unlike the incroyables with their flamboyant colors and clashing patterns, Chauvelin’s whole manner of dress was calculated not to draw the eye.

But something had certainly drawn Blakeney’s eye. The dandy had set down the champagne bottle and taken out his lorgnette again, and he was inspecting Chauvelin’s cravat as if it were something that had crawled up around his neck and died there. Blakeney’s own cravat was an ostentatious affair of Mechlin lace, tied off with a barrel knot and the stiff, flaring tails that were currently in fashion. it was certainly more exuberant than Chauvelin’s modest linen, but he couldn’t say the contrast between them was so great as to merit this prolonged scrutiny.

“Lud, sir, I cannot bear to look. I really must –” Blakeney put away the lorgnette and held his hands up before him for a moment, his fingers twitching fitfully. Then they shot out and reached for Chauvelin’s neck.

Chauvelin was too shocked to protest or even to retreat. In truth, he hadn’t imagined a retreat might be necessary, for the corner of the refreshments table stood between them and should have afforded him some natural defenses. But it seemed Blakeney had arms to match his height. Before Chauvelin quite knew what had befallen him, the fop’s long fingers had deftly untied his cravat.

In moments of great shock the mind takes note of peculiar details. Chauvelin was struck by the fact that Blakeney had curiously slender, elegant fingers for such a big man. Everything else about his person was drawn with bold, robust lines, the very image of an English sportsman, but his hands were almost effeminate in their delicacy. So captivated was Chauvelin by this incongruity, so absorbed was he in the dance of those graceful digits as they pulled the linen taut once more and began to tie it off again in some pattern of Blakeney’s own devising, that it was left to his host to challenge the dandy’s outrageous effrontery.

“Sir Percy!” said Hawkesbury, sounding scandalized.

“Fear not, fear not, my dear sir. Monsieur Chambertin will soon be the envy of your ballroom! Just a little fold here, and a tuck _there_ …”

Blakeney’s nimble fingers undertook to make a series of delicate folds, weaving the fabric over and under itself to anchor them until Chauvelin could not even guess what he was trying to achieve by it. Some sort of bizarre structure was forming, something that took the place of a knot but was vastly more complicated.

At last Blakeney released his cravat and stood back, dusting off his hands.

“What do you say to that, you fellows?” he asked his companions triumphantly.

“Odd’s fish, Percy,” said Dewhurst. “It’s remarkable!”

“A bloomin’ miracle, I’d call it,” said the other. “Begad, I’d love to see it in red silk!”

Even Lord Hawkesbury was suppressing a smile. “Very fine work, Sir Percy.”

Chauvelin reached up and felt at his throat. It was impossible to see something tied beneath his own chin, but his groping fingers detected a sort of carbuncle. And since he could not put it to rights without monopolizing a mirror for much longer than was polite in company, he was saddled with the damn thing, whatever it was, for the rest of the evening. He was about to ask Blakeney what the devil he had done to his cravat, and more to the point _why_ , but before he could find a suitably courteous yet scathing way to phrase the question, the dandy swept him an elaborate bow.

“Your servant, sir,” he said, and snatching up the champagne bottle, he and his friends vanished into the crowd. It was another half hour before Chauvelin finally managed to escape Lord Hawkesbury and make his way to the other end of the ballroom, where he could have a look at himself in a mirror.

Blakeney had tied off his cravat into a sort of flower or rosette. It nestled neatly at the base of his throat, set off by the ruffles of his jabot as though it were cradled in a bed of leaves. Five lobes – petals, one might say – swirled around a puffed center, in an elegant parody of the colored cockades that had become so popular in France with the advent of the Revolution. Chauvelin’s cravat was pure white linen, which meant that for the rest of the evening his neckcloth would be declaring his allegiance to the Bourbons.

For the second time that night, Chauvelin wondered whether this coded insult could truly be an accident, or whether the dandy was far more clever than his reputation or his costume might suggest. But those gold and indigo stripes… no. No man who wore that coat could have even a passing acquaintance with the concept of subtlety.

Over the course of the evening he received a number of compliments on his singular sense of style, not all of them laced with sarcasm, and later on he had ample opportunity to study Marguerite and to observe beneath her cheerful façade the distinctive signs of ennui. As far as his mission was concerned, the night had been a roaring success. Yet he left the ball feeling unsettled and out of sorts, as if he were suffering from a mild case of indigestion.

It was not until three months later, on the boat back from Calais after his failed attempt to capture the Scarlet Pimpernel, that Chauvelin recalled the five-petaled flower Blakeney had tied about his neck on their first meeting and finally understood all the layers of the joke. And when he did, he came very near to ripping off his cravat and hurling it into the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chauvelin's thoughts on incroyable fashion have been shamelessly stolen from [Balzac](https://books.google.com/books?newbks=0&id=UWFKAQAAIAAJ&jtp=73#v=onepage&q&f=false). What can I say? [They're both right](https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/1-les-incroyables-by-carle-vernet-antique-images.jpg).


	2. La Cravate en Cascade

Chauvelin was, he felt, getting better at seeing through the Scarlet Pimpernel’s disguises. The trouble was that this budding talent did him not the least bit of good, not when Blakeney could incite a mob against him the next instant and then heft him over his shoulder like a bale of goods and carry him off to some unknown and no doubt unpleasant destination. The utter failure of Chauvelin’s plan was bitter disappointment enough, but his resentment was fed by a sense that he had been the victim of a sort of cosmic injustice. It simply wasn’t _reasonable_ that Blakeney should be able to turn a republican crowd so swiftly and snatch Chauvelin up as if he weighed next to nothing. A man might be a diplomatist or a Hercules, but before he’d had the misfortune to cross paths with the damnable English spy, Chauvelin had never met anyone who was both.

His own actions were not beyond criticism. It had been a stupid piece of showmanship to address Blakeney in English, which had only lent credence to the accusation of spying. Likewise, he should have thought to step out of the reach of Blakeney’s absurdly long arms before trying to blow the whistle that would summon the gendarmerie. But Chauvelin had a hideous creeping suspicion that even if he had done everything perfectly, Blakeney would still have found a way to kick over his carefully constructed trap as easily as a child might knock down a tower of wooden blocks. He’d have to plan things more thoroughly next time, secure hostages well in advance–

Assuming there was a next time. If Chauvelin could make those hypothetical hostages half as secure as Blakeney had made him, the Scarlet Pimpernel would have the devil’s own time rescuing them. Chauvelin might as well have been trying to break free of an iron bar for all the good his struggles were doing him. Prising at Blakeney’s arm achieved nothing at all, and the most vigorous kicks he could rain down on his captor’s spine elicited no more than a grunt. It seemed nothing in the world would induce Blakeney to put him down – not that Chauvelin really wanted him to, since it would leave him at the mercy of the frightened rabble following at their heels, but he was no more eager to find out what Blakeney had in store for him.

They wound their way through the bowels of the chateau with the bloodthirsty cries of the mob echoing behind them, until they came at last to a door of solid black oak that opened onto a darkness smelling of sour wine and long-dead rodents. Into this unpromising cavern Blakeney carried his struggling prisoner. Chauvelin landed a final kick, which he hoped hit Blakeney squarely in the kidneys, and then found himself flipped over and set on his feet, then dusted down with a buffeting force. Feeling rather bruised, he whirled on his enemy, who heaved the door to behind him and favored Chauvelin with his inane grin. Blakeney’s teeth gleamed faintly in the dim light that came through the door grating.

“I say, it’s a bit damp down here, isn’t it?”

“It’s a wine cellar,” Chauvelin observed flatly.

“Yes, I do apologize for the accommodations, but I wanted someplace with a solid door. You too, I think.”

This was a point Chauvelin found it impossible to contest. They listened for a moment to the muffled baying of the crowd through the thick stone walls of the cellar, and he shuddered.

“What do you mean to do with me?”

“Oh, I think I shall leave that to your delightfully vivid imagination.” Blakeney glanced around at their surroundings – or what could be made out of them in the dank gloom – and frowned. “Still, I can promise you pneumonia ain’t in it. Demmed silly way to go, pneumonia. If a fellow intends to drown he ought to do it on a yacht and take some enjoyment in the process, what? instead of expiring on a heap of moldy straw in a wretched hole like this.”

“For once, Sir Percy, we are in perfect agreement. So if you would be so good as to remove me to some more salubrious location–“

“Now, that I fear I cannot do. I have business in the town that will not wait. Still, we can’t have you catching your death of cold. That’s not at all the sort of gift a chap ought to bring such an engaging new friend to welcome in the new year.” Blakeney studied him doubtfully for a moment, then brightened. He plucked the filthy Phrygian cap from his own head, and before Chauvelin could think to duck away, tugged it firmly down around his ears. 

Chauvelin took a hasty step backwards, but again he was undone by Blakeney’s ridiculously long reach. The Pimpernel seized him by the lapel and held him fast, then unhurriedly picked loose the knot of Chauvelin’s cravat and whisked it off his neck, taking no more notice of Chauvelin’s attempts to wrench himself free than a mother might of the squirming child she was bundling into its winter clothes. It was so mortifying to find himself helpless even now, when he had his feet on the ground and proper leverage to prise at Blakeney’s arm, that after a few minutes of this wretched struggle Chauvelin gave it up and stood still, mute and defeated beneath his enemy’s hands.

Blakeney wrapped Chauvelin’s cravat back around his neck, lapping it twice with the inner layer nestled snugly beneath his chin and an outer, lower band to hold the inner layer in place. He deftly tucked the tail up and under the lower band and pulled it free so that the linen cascaded down Chauvelin’s throat like a little waterfall, securing the whole arrangement. Then he stood back to survey his work, radiating a satisfaction that was visible even in the feeble light.

“Much better! Snug as a bug in a rug, as we say across the Channel.”

Perhaps they did say that across the Channel, but Chauvelin would lay good money they didn’t say it to anyone over the age of five. He glowered at his captor, who grinned at him again.

“ _À bientôt_ , my dear Monsieur Chambertin!” Blakeney declared with mocking good cheer, and walked out, slamming the door behind him and leaving Chauvelin alone in the dark.

Outside Chauvelin could hear him shoving home the bolts, and then the clatter of a chain and a key turning in a rusty lock. He wasn’t getting out of this makeshift prison in a hurry. Nor, it seemed, was anyone getting in, for the crowd had come to see what all the commotion was about and Chauvelin could hear Blakeney remonstrating with them on the other side of the door. There was such a clamor that he could only make out snatches of the conversation, but the gist of Blakeney’s argument seemed to be that as the spy was now securely locked up, they might all go back to their merrymaking and leave him to the proper authorities. When they got back to town they could notify the police commissaire, and until then he himself would look after the key for safekeeping.

It appeared Blakeney could sway a mob as easily to peace as to bloodshed, for with a bit of grumbling they all trooped after him up the cellar steps and left Chauvelin to the cold and the damp and the thick, almost suffocating silence that rules over deserted places underground. Chauvelin waited until the last sounds of their passage died away and then made a cautious circuit of the room, barking his shin on an empty cask despite all his care, for once he strayed more than a few feet from the door he could no longer make out his hand in front of his face. The cellar had been plundered years ago; there was nothing left but empty wine racks, a handful of casks like the one he’d tripped over, and a few piles of ancient, foul-smelling straw. For want of better alternatives, he made himself a stool from one of the casks and settled down to wait, clutching his arms about him to ward off the chill.

Blakeney would return for him, surely. He might be a reactionary and a spy, but he wasn’t the sort to leave an enemy in a locked room to perish of starvation and thirst. That “ _À bientôt!_ ” had been as much a promise as a jibe. Which meant that Chauvelin was going to have to decide what the hell he intended to do about his cravat.

Even in the dark he knew exactly what Blakeney had done with it: he had fastened it in the manner called “ _en cascade_ ”, or less charitably “ _à la groom_ ”, for the style was much favored by coachmen and lackeys. Such humble folk preferred it for two reasons: firstly, because with none of the fabric needed to make a knot there was more cloth left over to cover the neck, making it warmer than most of the competing styles, and secondly, because it could be fixed in the dark without access to a mirror and one could nevertheless be assured of a more or less symmetrical result. For men who had to rise before dawn to feed and water horses or to get a household’s fires lit but who still needed to look presentable when their masters deigned to amble out of bed six hours later, this was a decisive advantage.

Chauvelin was fervently committed to equality when it came to the franchise and other political rights, but not with regard to his neckwear. As much as Blakeney delighted in mocking him for it, there was nothing remarkable about the way in which he tied his cravat. Unlike certain people with a pathological need to be at the center of attention at all times, even when they were meant to be incognito as a republican musician, Chauvelin preferred to melt into the shadows, and that required him to dress after the manner of his own class. It would no more have occurred to him to ape a proletarian style than it would have to mimic Sir Percy Blakeney’s incroyable flair.

On the other hand, like the servants who had popularized this particular look, Chauvelin presently found himself without either light or mirror. There was no chance that he’d be able to tie a knot symmetrical enough to look even halfway respectable, much less to pass Blakeney’s mocking scrutiny. It would be humiliating to be found like this – but was it more humiliating to wear a lackey’s style well than a gentleman’s style poorly? And it really was warmer than the way he’d tied his cravat before. His hand hovered for a moment at his throat, above the place where Blakeney’s deft fingers had so recently fastened the cravat about his neck with such easy confidence, and then he let it drop.

It was a decision he did not regret, for he was left shivering in the dark for almost twenty-four hours before someone at last notified the police commissaire in Choisy about the prisoner in the wine cellar and a pair of gendarmes were sent to liberate him. But when they did finally let him out, he received some very odd looks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The cravat _en cascade_](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/50/6d/71/506d71d94d6bed6b253672b12a182909--revolution-grooms.jpg)


	3. La Cravate du Chaton

Let it not be said that Chauvelin did not learn from his mistakes.

In Boulogne he made very sure that he was holding all the cards before he ventured to close with the Scarlet Pimpernel once more. He had for hostages Marguerite, who had been foolish enough to steal back into France and straight into his hands, and the entire populace of the town. The threat to the first would ensure her husband’s cooperation. The threat to the second would ensure that neither Blakeney would leave before Chauvelin had what he wanted of them. Even the Scarlet Pimpernel couldn’t spirit ten thousand people away across the Channel, and while he might be able to get his wife out somehow, he wouldn’t do it when it meant innocents would die to buy her freedom.

The plan was foolproof, and despite Blakeney’s minor bout of theatrics at the end, it had gone almost without a hiccup.

Which was why Chauvelin could not quite make out why the man in question, this enemy whom he had reduced to utter dishonor and disgrace, should be dissolved into gales of helpless laughter by the mere mention of the damning letter he’d penned at Chauvelin’s behest.

“Lud! My dear Monsieur Chambertin, you don’t seriously think..? Begad, man, I don’t know which of our intellects you’ve worse insulted. I suppose I ought to be angry, if only I could stop laughing long enough–” and indeed this appeared to be presenting Blakeney with some difficulties, for after every few words this speech was interrupted by another burst of merriment– “Faith, sir, you don’t really believe I let that scoundrel Collot take that demmed letter off with him to Paris? As if an English gentleman would lie scuffling on the floor like a schoolboy and allow a letter to be filched from him! Truly, sir, you are astonishing.”

Chauvelin stood with his mouth agape. Of all the possible reactions Blakeney might have to him bringing up the letter, he had not anticipated this one. An enervating dread stole over him, and he found he could not move or speak, only stare at his enemy in horrified bewilderment.

Blakeney took his silence as a tacit request for an explanation.

“I wrote a duplicate, of course, whilst you thought me soused with brandy upstairs. Didn’t much care for your message, so I put in one of mine own. Short, to the point – I daresay you can guess what it says. Didn’t have time to translate it into French – never could get the hang of your demmed alexandrines – but I’m sure someone will be kind enough to do the honors for Citizen Robespierre when it gets to Paris. I expect he’ll find it as amusing as I did.”

“And the original?” Chauvelin asked numbly. 

Blakeney took a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket, carefully smoothed it out against his thigh, and then rolled it into a cylinder.

“Here, sir; ’tis here. But you really are a nincompoop if you believed it would serve any other purpose than me smacking you in the face with it.”

And with this remark, he suited action to words and swatted Chauvelin briskly over the nose with the rolled paper, as one might rebuke a naughty puppy or a kitten.

As the blow fell, the third Ave Maria of the Angelus rang out, and the cannon sounded from the harbor. The hour of the opening of the gates and the free harbor was at hand, and the general amnesty was being declared throughout the city.

The tolling of the bell broke in on the spell of horror that had come over Chauvelin like something heard in a dream. It occurred to him that this was a crisis – not just another crushing humiliation at the hands of the Scarlet Pimpernel, but a genuine life-threatening emergency – and he really ought to be doing something about it.

It was a day’s ride to Paris even if one rode like a maniac, and there was the aerial telegraph at Lille – at the very least, he could get a message through to Paris to have someone intercept Collot d’Herbois at the city gates. No doubt Collot would assume any instructions to destroy the letter were a false signal from the League and disregard them, but it should be possible at least to persuade him to break the seal and assure himself of the contents. That might be enough to save both their lives. Robespierre wouldn’t be pleased to hear how they’d been hoodwinked, but he’d be a damned sight happier than if Chauvelin’s colleague unwittingly handed him Blakeney’s wretched doggerel.

And Blakeney was still here. There was, at this stage, no hope of compelling him to write another copy of the letter – no doubt Marguerite was safely aboard the _Day Dream_ by now, and they’d look like complete imbeciles threatening the town again when it was through their own heedless incompetence that they’d allowed the letters to be swapped. That was the sort of high-handed tyranny that risked breaking through the pall of fear that held the Boulonnais in thrall and turning the mob against the representatives of the Convention, and with Collot on the road Chauvelin would have to issue the decree alone. He’d probably end up swinging from a lamp post.

But the city had walls and Blakeney stood within them, and the Republic had soldiers, and spies could be shot. The gates were open now, but Blakeney still needed to get through one, or to reach his yacht in the harbor. That approach could be watched, and so could the gates. And Blakeney hadn’t had the sense to destroy the original copy of the letter – he held it in his hand, all for the purpose of taunting his enemy. His arrogance might yet be his undoing. Chauvelin knew from bitter experience he had no hopes of wresting the paper from him, but how difficult could it be to take it from a corpse?

All these considerations went through his mind in a flash, and he made a break for the door.

In two strides Blakeney had caught up with him and seized him by the collar. He effortlessly dragged his struggling prisoner back into the room.

“Oh, no,” he said. “We had an appointment, you and I, at this very place and hour, and it’s demmed bad form of you to run out on it. If you’ve lost your taste for dueling I shan’t hold you to it – in any event you seem to have misplaced your sword – but we had a bargain, and I do intend to hold you to that. Lady Blakeney and myself to leave Boulogne free and unmolested, I believe those were your exact words.”

“In exchange for the letter!” Chauvelin spat, incensed.

“In exchange for a letter addressed to you in mine own hand, in accordance with your draft, and signed in front of your witnesses.” Blakeney held up the rolled paper. “I have it here, sir. I don’t believe you ever specified who should have the keeping of it.”

“Pure sophistry, Sir Percy. It isn’t worthy of you.”

“Unworthy, of the fellow who penned this interesting document?” Blakeney asked with a laugh, brandishing the letter at him. “Surely such a blackguard is capable of anything! Oh, but it doesn’t matter – you are going to keep up your end of the bargain will you or nill you. You see how solicitous I am of _your_ honor, my dear Monsieur Chambertin! The letter comes with me, and you are staying here.”

He marched Chauvelin over to the place where Marguerite had been sitting. Slipping the letter back into his pocket, he took up the gag and cord Sergeant Hébert had dropped on the floor when he went off to ring the bells.

“Intended for my wife, methinks. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, wouldn’t you agree?”

Chauvelin did not agree, and vouchsafed this opinion with a curse and a renewal of his struggles, but the tensions and anxiety of the past four days had reduced him to a state of nervous exhaustion, compounded by the shock of Blakeney’s dreadful coup. He could mount only a feeble resistance, and in a trice Blakeney had him bound hand and foot and effectively silenced. The Englishman checked to make sure the cords were well fastened and the gag secure, and then picked Chauvelin up as he might a child and carried him into the adjoining room where Marguerite had been held captive.

He deposited his helpless bundle on the couch with surprising tenderness and then sat him upright.

“Ah, your cravat has come undone,” Blakeney observed, tutting, for indeed it had come loose in their struggles. “What will your friends think of me if I should leave you in this deplorable state? No, this won’t do at all.”

And before Chauvelin’s stupefied gaze, he delicately untangled what remained of the knot and tied it again in some new and elaborate configuration. Chauvelin wondered vaguely what novel humiliation Blakeney had decided to subject him to this time, but compared to all the rest of it, the state of his cravat hardly seemed to matter.

“There, you make a charming present! It wants only a label,” said Blakeney when he had finished, and pulled a bit of card from the pocket of his coat. Chauvelin could not quite make out the lines scribbled upon it, but he had a sinking feeling he already knew what they said.

“A label and a pin,” Blakeney amended, frowning thoughtfully down at his creation. He cast about in his pockets for a moment, but finding nothing there to satisfy him, he sighed and removed the golden pin that fastened his own cravat. On the head, some embossed design glinted dimly in the lamplight. A close observer might have made out the five petals of a certain wayside flower.

“Needs must,” said Blakeney with a good-natured shrug, and pushed the pin through the card to fasten it to Chauvelin’s cravat.

So it was that when Sergeant Hébert and a few of his soldiers discovered Chauvelin some hours later, they found the representative of the Convention bound fast, with his cravat tied into a giant fluffy bow like that which might adorn the neck of a beloved kitten, and pinned just beneath it a piece of card that read:

> _We seek him here! we seek him there!  
>  Those Frenchies seek him everywhere!  
> Is he in heaven? – Is he in hell?  
> That demmed, elusive Pimpernel!_
>
>> 


	4. Le Nœud Gordien

Chauvelin kept the golden pin. No power on earth could have compelled him to wear it, but he carried it with him in the pocket of his waistcoat. Sometimes, when the Scarlet Pimpernel was near to his thoughts and he was finalizing the last details of some new plot to entrap him or surveying the wreckage Blakeney had left in his wake after the scheme had failed, he would take it out and run his thumb over the embossed flower on the head, over and over again until it felt as though the tips of the petals had rubbed his finger raw.

Whenever circumstances permitted, when he heard rumor of the League’s activities or a target seemed too alluring for the Pimpernel to resist, he would make another attempt to capture his nemesis. But the apprehension of the English spy was not now his primary duty. After his string of failures, the Committee of Public Safety had despaired of him and assigned him elsewhere. However poor his record as a spycatcher, Chauvelin was known to be a ruthless and able administrator, and so he was sent _en mission_ to oversee the conscription of the revolutionary armies or to put down the royalist or federalist insurrections brewing in the provinces.

The knowledge that the Scarlet Pimpernel was out there somewhere carrying on his nefarious schemes against the Republic was an unceasing torment to him, and it was further salt in his wounds to know that for Blakeney this was all just another game, of no greater significance than a round of billiards. His face haunted Chauvelin’s daydreams and his sleepless nights – it was unbearable to think that the thread of destiny which bound them together might be tied on only one end. Yet for all the Englishman’s affected insouciance, Chauvelin was beginning to wonder whether the entanglement might not be mutual, for at times he got the distinct impression that Blakeney came looking for _him_. 

Such was the case in Orange, where he had been sent to encourage the local Revolutionary Tribunal to go about its business with a little more zeal. Dauphiné was on the whole a patriotic province: the Revolution had begun in Grenoble, and the people with their long history of Protestantism had no cause to love the Ancien Régime. It would not take much to nudge them back onto the right path. The arrest and execution of a few refractory nobles, the confiscation of the traitors’ properties to be sold off for the common good – all dull, routine work, nothing to interest the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Oh, there were the Frontenacs, to be sure, and a handful of other _ci-devants_ , but there was nowhere in France one couldn’t find a gang of aristocrats destined for the scaffold. Blakeney couldn’t save them all, and these ones were neither very numerous nor very sympathetic. Yet here he was all the same, dragging a whole platoon of soldiers into his subterfuge and afterwards leaving in the pocket of their lieutenant a copy of that damned poem addressed to “ _mon ami Chauvelin_ ” – well! It was hard to believe that it was truly for the Frontenacs he had come.

But whatever his reasons, thank goodness he had, or Fleurette would have been lost. Or– no, perhaps Chauvelin could have swayed the Tribunal; he had won the crowd over to his side by the time Blakeney intervened. But he could not have saved her without condemning the prosecution witnesses, that dimwitted Lieutenant Godet and little Adèle. Now that he had nothing more to fear from them, the flames of Chauvelin’s hatred had cooled to a bitter, ashy horror. For Godet he still nurtured a hearty dislike; he would not have minded seeing that stupid mustachioed head roll. But Adèle…

The child was blameless. Adèle had acted as any loyal citizen should, out of love for her country – or out of petty spite towards her betters, perhaps, but it all was the same thing in the end. That rage against injustice, that desire to tear down the old world with all its hierarchies and iniquities, was the engine driving the revolution forward. And Chauvelin had constructed a piece of that vicious old world in his own house – thoughtlessly, without malice, but what good were his good intentions to Adèle, who had been shoved out the door to earn her own living as soon as she could toddle so that her mother might nurse Chauvelin’s child in her place? A retribution indeed, and he could not say that he did not deserve it. And for that, for doing her patriotic duty, he had been prepared to condemn that innocent girl to death.

Such cataclysms as the one that had engulfed France had their victims. No system of justice was infallible, and the emergency measures they had been forced to adopt increased the chance of error. A net fine enough to catch the traitors infesting their country was bound to haul up some honest citizens as well. It was a necessary evil, and Chauvelin accepted it as such. He knew he had sent innocents to their deaths – he had been prepared to massacre half of Boulogne to destroy the Scarlet Pimpernel. But always it was in pursuit of some greater goal, not out of personal interest. To denounce Adèle as a traitor, when in truth it was Fleurette who had erred, and Chauvelin himself who had spent three weeks deliberately subverting a revolutionary tribunal… 

But it had been the only way he could see to save his daughter’s life. To save both girls – that had required the unique artistry of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

He glanced at the figure sitting beside him in the darkness of the coach, elegant and regal in his many-caped coat. Blakeney had promised that Fleurette would be safe, that he would take her to England where Marguerite would lavish every care on her, a peculiar sort of revenge for all the times Chauvelin had held her in captivity. It was probably true. Even if it wasn’t, there was nothing Chauvelin could do about it. As usual, their encounter had ended with him entirely in Blakeney’s power.

He took a deep breath.

“I am ready, Sir Percy."

Blakeney looked over at him in bewilderment. "Ready? For what?"

“My life is in your hands,” said Chauvelin. It seemed to him that Blakeney should not need to be reminded of this, but it had been a very long and upsetting day. A maelstrom of relief and shame and fear and humiliation and gratitude had descended upon his brain, and it was very hard to think. “My enemies are waiting for me in Orange. You have but to send me back there, and your revenge will be complete."

Blakeney burst out laughing.

“To think you’ve spent two years making a study of me, and you know me as poorly as that! What, should I bring our amusing friendship to an untimely end by handing you over to your genial colleagues in Orange? Am I never to enjoy another diverting conversation such as this one? Perish the thought, my dear Monsieur Chambertin!”

Chauvelin couldn’t even try to make sense of this. Blakeney was incomprehensible at the best of times, and right now his mind was such a tumble of emotion that trying to put two thoughts together felt like trying to push his way through a hurricane.

“But… you said at the Tribunal that you were hitting back,” he said dully.

Blakeney’s merry laugh rang out through the coach.

“La, man! Can't you see that I _am_ hitting back? How else should I avenge myself upon you but by depriving your beloved Madame Guillotine of her prey, as ever I have?” But his face grew somber, and when he spoke again there was an unusual sincerity in his blue eyes. “If you yourself, or an innocent child like Fleurette, can be so easily caught up in this machinery of death of yours, do you not think that perhaps–?” 

That fateful word, ‘innocent’, cut through the storm inside Chauvelin’s head.

“Innocent? No, she was not innocent. You always rescue the guilty, Sir Percy. Fleurette willfully and knowingly conspired to defraud the state, and I – for the past three weeks I have sought to frustrate the proper function of the Revolutionary Tribunal. The crowd was right to condemn us. Only, I –”

His words caught in his throat, and he found he could not go on. He bowed his head and clenched his fingers together in his lap until his knuckles shone white.

“Good God, man, you need not be ashamed to wish to save your own child from the guillotine!” exclaimed Blakeney, momentarily appalled into proper pronunciation.

Chauvelin made no answer. It was not that, or not only that. He was glad that Fleurette was safe; he could not be otherwise. Since the night of her arrest he had been consumed by the thought of saving her, throwing himself into the project with the single-minded fervor he had hitherto devoted only to the pursuit of the man who sat beside him. And the truth was, he had no wish to die himself, certainly not at the hands of Percy Blakeney and two provincial dolts on the Orange Tribunal. But he was terribly afraid that in accepting salvation from such a source, he had betrayed himself, or worse, betrayed his country, and he was not sure how to live with himself afterward. It would be so much simpler if Blakeney would just behave sensibly for once and turn him over to the gendarmerie.

After a while Blakeney said, with an attempt at flippancy that was not altogether convincing, “Well, if you wish to return to Orange I shall not hinder you. Only I had rather hoped I might tell your daughter you were safe.”

“Safe!” Now it was Chauvelin’s turn to laugh, but there was no humor in it.

“No,” Blakeney conceded obligingly. “I daresay nobody in France is safe while this Carmagnole of yours goes on.”

“Certainly not you, Sir Percy. You must not imagine this changes anything between us. If you grant me my life, I will devote the remainder of it to hunting down the Scarlet Pimpernel. You must not think otherwise.”

“Faith, man, I had not dreamt of it!” If the habitual gaiety of Blakeney’s laugh was somewhat strained, Chauvelin was in no state to notice. “You have tried to do me such an infinity of wrongs; you still hate me so cordially, whereas I–” He broke off, his lips pressed together into a thin line, his slender hand clutched upon his knee. After a moment he gained a hold of himself, and essayed another laugh. “What a tangle this is!”

He took Chauvelin gently by the shoulders and half-turned him to face him. “Your cravat has come undone. You must allow me to tie it – the Scarlet Pimpernel can’t deliver you looking like a ragamuffin. There are standards to maintain, what? And since for once we have ample time…”

Chauvelin rested his head against the back of the coach and let Blakeney fiddle with his cravat to his heart’s content. It was very strange. For all his protests earlier – and Blakeney was right, none of them were safe, certainly not Chauvelin, who would have to account for his actions in Orange when he got back to Paris – he felt entirely secure. His mortal enemy’s hands were at his throat, and yet he felt safer than he had in days, perhaps in months. Was this how all the Scarlet Pimpernel’s charges felt, under the aegis of his protection?

They travelled in silence for a time, Chauvelin half-dozing while Blakeney busied himself with knots and folds. After a while he said,

“Ah, I need a pin.”

Mechanically, Chauvelin reached into his waistcoat and produced the golden pin that Blakeney had given him in Boulogne.

Between the darkness in the coach and the rigors of the day, he could perhaps be excused for failing to note the strange expression that passed over Blakeney’s face.

By the time Blakeney left him in Nîmes, some of Chauvelin’s usual presence of mind was beginning to return to him. No doubt a denunciation was already making its way from Orange to the Committee of Public Safety in Paris, and Fleurette’s disappearance would only give weight to the charges. If he wished to survive the next few weeks he would have to move, very quickly and very cleverly, to neutralize the accusations mounting against him, and his nimble, sharp-edged mind was already starting to plot out stratagems.

It was not until he saw himself in the mirror as he was washing up for bed that he remembered Blakeney had done something to his cravat.

Staring back at him, arranged with crisp folds and perfect symmetry and secured by Blakeney’s golden pin, were the neat geometric lines of the style dandies hailed as the very pinnacle of their art, the intricate construction they called “The Gordian Knot”. The sight of the elaborate, foppish thing filled Chauvelin with a sudden fury. He pulled out the pin and tried to tear the cravat from his neck, but he was thwarted by the double loop of the knot, which only tightened around his throat and began to choke him. He had to forcibly restrain himself from yanking at the ends and spend five minutes carefully unpicking it before he could extricate himself.

Of course, the thing about a Gordian knot, Chauvelin reflected coldly afterward, looking down at the mangled strip of linen in his hands, was that there was a very well-known method for untangling it. It took no great skill or patience, just determination and a quick, clean slice with a sharp blade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The Gordian Knot](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/58166/58166-h/images/plate-b.jpg)


	5. La Cravate à la Bourreau

A clean slice, then.

It was so simple, he could not think why he had not done it before. All those times he’d had the Scarlet Pimpernel in his power – in Boulogne, in Paris – and every time, he’d allowed the man to live, when a quick round from a firing squad or a single stroke of the guillotine could have put an end to all his torment. So many sleepless nights, such much needless misery and humiliation! _Eighteen_ days they’d held Blakeney in the Conciergerie, and the only time Chauvelin had thought, “I must bring an end to this,” it had been out of pity, because after being so long deprived of sleep and air Blakeney looked liked a living corpse, and in that brief moment Chauvelin felt sorry for him.

There was something about Blakeney that baffled all his good sense, so that again and again he allowed the Scarlet Pimpernel to slip through his fingers. This need he felt to see the man humbled, to ensure he felt some trace of the humiliations he had repeatedly inflicted upon Chauvelin and the Republic – it was a form of madness. What did it matter whether the Scarlet Pimpernel died in misery or died laughing, so long as he ceased to trouble France? Some of the aristos mounted the scaffold still swollen with the arrogance and conceit that had sent them there, but the guillotine sliced through a stiff neck as readily as a craven one. One fall of the knife, that was all it would take, and then Chauvelin would be free of him forever.

This time there would be no sophisticated stratagems, no ploys, no offers to give Blakeney his liberty in return for information or a discrediting letter. Chauvelin had not even bothered to set a trap. There was no longer any need for subterfuge. Just a few straightforward facts: he had one hostage, Marguerite Blakeney, and he would exchange her only for another. Blakeney would surrender himself, or his wife would be shot. There were a score of National Guardsmen upstairs eager to do it, who waited only for Chauvelin’s signal.

He hadn’t expected Blakeney to be very happy about this proposal. He’d imagined that the man might curse him, denounce him for his villainy, even strike him. Determined though Chauvelin was to be coldly dispassionate about this final plan, there was still a part of him that relished the thought of putting a crack in that insufferable cavalier façade.

It was something of an anti-climax to find himself being peered at through Blakeney’s lorgnette with mild disapproval, as if he’d worn a colored cravat to court.

“This – sending a pack of footpads to England to abduct my wife – isn’t on, you know,” the Englishman said.

Chauvelin laughed. “For the past two years you have all but made a profession of kidnapping citizens of France and smuggling them across the Channel. You can hardly complain if someone else decides to do likewise.”

“Not _quite_ likewise, I think.”

“Ah, no, of course not. You may make free of our country as you please, but British soil is sacrosanct.”

“Did a word of reproach pass my lips when your agents ambushed my poor friends at The Fisherman's Rest? Not at all, my dear Monsieur Chambertin, not at all! I have always maintained that a man in this line of work must take his chances. No, I was referring to the welcome our guests may expect to receive in our respective homelands. When the League brings people to England, it’s not our usual practice to lock them in a room with – what was it you said, a dozen National Guardsmen?”

“Twenty, Sir Percy.”

“Twenty, thank you – waiting outside the door to shoot them. Demmed inhospitable I call that, sir.”

“You could free your wife within the hour,” Chauvelin pointed out. “Only accompany me upstairs, and Lady Blakeney may return to England at her pleasure.”

“I fear the pleasures of that fair isle might dim for her somewhat, knowing the price of her passage was her husband’s head.”

“Something you would have done well to consider earlier, Sir Percy, before you found yourself in your current plight. This conflict was none of our making – it was you who insisted upon coming here to meddle in our affairs. Had you ceased to trouble France the first time you escaped justice, or the second, or the tenth, you would not now face the bitter choice between making Lady Blakeney a widow or making her a–”

He did not get the chance to finish the sentence, for Blakeney’s hands were locked around his throat before he could utter the last word, the same slender fingers that had so often delicately adjusted his cravat digging into his trachea. Chauvelin prised desperately at Blakeney’s wrists, trying to loosen that deadly grip, but he was no more a match for the Englishman’s fantastic strength than he had ever been, and his efforts were quite futile.

His vision darkened around the edges, and he had just time enough to think that he had made a fatal miscalculation, and he might have profited from his own advice about pressing one’s luck, when the terrible pressure eased. The fury faded from Blakeney’s eyes to be replaced by the calculated nonchalance of the affable fop, and he released Chauvelin with a scornful laugh. Chauvelin fell back against the wall. He leaned there helplessly for a few seconds, gasping for breath and rubbing his aching throat, before he found that his shaking knees would not hold him and he had to collapse onto the nearest bench.

But weak and light-headed as he felt, there was a smile playing around his own lips. Blakeney could adopt his air of condescending amusement all he liked, now – for a moment they had both seen what lay behind the mask.

“Forgive me,” said Blakeney good-humoredly, as if he was apologizing for taking the last canapé rather than attempted strangulation. “It’s just that whenever you say my wife’s name, I am possessed by an uncontrollable urge to shake all the breath from your odious little body as I would a rat."

"Shake, my dear Sir Percy, by all means shake!” Chauvelin said cheerfully, although his voice rasped painfully in his throat. "I will readily concede that I am a puny rat and you are the most magnificent of lions; I am entirely at your mercy. Only – I fear it might prove injurious to Lady Blakeney’s health.”

Blakeney proved that he could in fact control his homicidal urges by declining to act on this one. Instead he dragged over another bench and sat astride it.

“Pray continue, my dear Monsieur Chambertin,” he said politely, or as politely as was possible when one was engaged in a two year campaign to address someone by the wrong name.

“You need not fear for her. Lady Blakeney is well, she wants for nothing – save only for her liberty, but then I understand such republican concepts hold little currency for her these days.”

Blakeney ignored this barb. Chauvelin shrugged and continued.

“Every day at seven in the evening, I visit the apartment upstairs and inquire after the welfare of the prisoner. If once I should fail to appear, the Guardsmen’s orders are to put her up against a wall and shoot her.”

“Rather hard luck for Lady Blakeney if you were to be run over by a carriage,” remarked Blakeney.

“Or if some English brute were to choke the life out of me in an antechamber? Yes, a pity, but I’m afraid it can’t be helped. It’s not an arrangement I foresee lasting for very long.”

“No?”

“Three days, I thought. I am sure you are too much of a gentleman to keep a lady in suspense.”

“Make it four, my dear Monsieur Chambertin, and I am eternally in your debt.”

Chauvelin hesitated. It would mean another day spent in tension and anxiety. No doubt Blakeney wanted those extra twenty-four hours to arrange some spectacular prison break. Chauvelin did not see how it could possibly be managed, but he knew Blakeney’s creativity in that area surpassed his own. But any rescue that could be achieved in four days could presumably be achieved in three, if Blakeney were really pressed to it, and if none were possible, four days were not such a long time for a young man to reconcile himself to the prospect of his death.

It was, in a manner of speaking, a last request.

“Four days then, Sir Percy. You see how ready I am to meet you in a spirit of conciliation? And if by seven o’clock on the fourth day you are not in our custody… you condemn your wife to death.”

There was a hardness in Blakeney’s eyes that even the supercilious attitude of the incroyable could no longer mask. 

“This is my reward for Orange, is it?”

“Even as I warned you.”

“I had believed you had some sense of – honor is too generous a term – shall we say, fair play?” Blakeney remarked conversationally. “It was clearly my mistake.”

“Fair play. What an interesting choice of words. Until now it has always been a game for you, has it not, Sir Percy? It never was for us. You would not like it if a stranger were to come to your country and meddle in your politics–”

“If my politics were anything like yours I should count it as a favor, sir. And so may you, ere long. There is more afoot in Paris tonight than this villainy you’re engaged in here. Your revolution has gorged itself long enough on the blood of its enemies. Since April it has been devouring its friends; I expect it will come down very soon with a fatal bout of indigestion. And when that day comes, there will be no one to save you from the guillotine, unless I myself–” Blakeney cut off his speech with a laugh. “Your cravat has come loose.”

“If it has, it’s undoubtedly your fault,” snapped Chauvelin. It had been in perfect order before Blakeney’s abortive attempt to strangle him.

“I will own it,” said Blakeney. “Allow me to set it to rights. I should not like there to be any outstanding debts between us.”

He leaned over and set to work with cool efficiency, looping and tucking with quick, firm movements of his hands. He seemed to take none of his usual delight in the process, but in less than a minute he was finished. He stood and looked down at Chauvelin coldly.

“It suits you very well, I think,” he said, and with that remark he strode out of the room.

Chauvelin looked down at his breast. Blakeney had styled his cravat after the fashion called _“de chasse”_ : crossed over twice at the throat, with the tails trailing down the chest in a loose twist. But he added a variation of his own design. Instead of twisting the tails together, he had wrapped one around the other, to form the shape of a hangman’s noose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The cravat _de chasse_](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/25/ca/71/25ca7150a54a3dbd8230cd441605e356.png)


	6. L'Importance de la Cravate

In the end, neither of their threats came to pass. Blakeney had, at the cost of a brand upon his arm, accomplished another miraculous last-minute rescue and spirited his wife away to safety. As for the Revolution, the flame of liberty was not so easily extinguished.

Robespierre fell, to be replaced by Tallien, his fellow regicide. The young fops of Paris thought it safe to declare themselves monarchists and pin white rosettes to their hats, but the Bourbons themselves remained in exile, their attempts to seize control of Brittany and the Vendée brutally repulsed. The Law of 22 Prairial was repealed, but the Law of Suspects remained in force. The Revolutionary Tribunal continued to sit in judgement, although its judges were replaced. A few hundred prisoners were released, but there was no general amnesty. Ruthless Terrorists like Fouché skipped nimbly across the chamber and established themselves among the forces of reaction.

As happens so often in French politics, the great transformation that had been promised amounted less to a change in policy than a change in personnel.

Chauvelin himself was a Robespierrist not by allegiance but by default. His eye was fixed upon the most notorious enemy of France, not the jockeying of factions within the Convention. Robespierre occasionally brought Chauvelin into his councils because he shared his determination to annihilate the Scarlet Pimpernel, but Chauvelin was not one of his intimates. He was so often gone from Paris, and he spoke so seldom before the Convention when he was there, that no one thought to number him among the Incorruptible's great supporters. Besides, his disgrace was widely known, and since Blakeney’s imprisonment in January there was no longer any mystery about the Scarlet Pimpernel’s identity. Everyone knew it was but a matter of time before Robespierre consigned Chauvelin to the same fate as all those who had outlived their usefulness to the Republic.

Too caught up in his duel with Blakeney to attend to the business of the legislature, Chauvelin had missed the sittings on the 8th and 9th of Thermidor. He had heard neither Robespierre’s speech decrying corruption and conspiracy amongst the deputies, nor Tallien’s rebuttal denouncing him as a tyrant. He had not been among the deputies arrested with Robespierre, nor had he joined the conspiracy at the Hôtel de Ville. When the victorious Thermidorians swept up Robespierre’s remaining friends and allies over the next few days, his name was omitted from the lists. It was generally assumed that, like Fouché, Collot d'Herbois, and all the others slated for death, Chauvelin would have betrayed the Left to save his own neck. No one bothered to ask his opinion on the matter.

The truth was that in all the excitement, he had simply been overlooked.

He endured a few anxious weeks, but no orders came for his arrest. He found himself at loose ends. By all reports, the Scarlet Pimpernel had disappeared from France. Chauvelin wished he could believe that his words at their last meeting had had some effect and Blakeney would cease to meddle in the affairs of a foreign nation, or failing that, that the threat to Marguerite’s life had frightened him off for good. It lacked the satisfying finality of claiming his head, but still it would have been _something_ : a bitter, partial victory, but a victory nonetheless.

But Chauvelin knew better. The end of the Terror had not brought an end to summary executions or the massacre of prisoners by angry mobs, but for all that Blakeney might claim to be acting out of common humanity, it was class solidarity that had always been his guiding principle. What was the life of some Protestant merchant in Nîmes or some peasant farmer in the Vaucluse to Sir Percy Blakeney, Baronet? To Blakeney’s credit, he had always insisted on bringing along the servants and accomplices of his aristocratic targets, instead of leaving them behind to face the wrath of the tribunals. But he hadn’t formed a secret society to relieve the misery of the French peasantry before the Revolution, and he wasn’t going to trouble himself over the fate of a few Jacobins, however bloody the reprisals against them might be.

Perhaps the wheel would turn round again – France was still at war with all of Europe and Brittany and the Vendée were still in open revolt, and no country so beleaguered could long tolerate a nest of traitors within her borders – but for the moment, the aristos were enjoying their jubilee, and the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel was idle. The great project that had consumed the last two years of Chauvelin’s life had come to an end.

He might never see Percy Blakeney again. The thought should have brought him relief. Instead, he found that the days yawned before him with a terrible blank emptiness. Everything around him seemed hollow and unreal. Sitting on the benches of the Riding School in the summer heat, the deliberations of the Convention fell on his ears like the buzzing of a hive, a drone of meaningless noise. It came to the point where he half wished that they _would_ arrest him, just so that he would no longer feel so unmoored.

If behind this fancy lay the memory of Blakeney’s final words to him, that ironic suggestion that he might come to save Chauvelin himself from the guillotine, it was a thought he refused to admit even to himself.

But he was not arrested. He was not even censured in the speeches of Tallien and the other Thermidorians, who seemed determined to define themselves against the Terror in which they had played such an enthusiastic part. He was not sent _en mission_ again – his reputation for ruthless efficiency now weighed against him – and so he continued to attend the sittings of the Convention: a small figure all in black with a pale, drawn face, every day occupying the same place in the farthest, uppermost corner of the left benches, watching his turncoat colleagues in silence like the shadow of a bad conscience.

As summer wound into autumn, the case of the one hundred and thirty-two federalists arrested in Nantes came before the Revolutionary Tribunal. In their defense, they raised the many crimes Carrier had committed in their city during the Terror, and for weeks the gossip on the benches of the Convention and in the streets of Paris was consumed by these atrocities: theft and pillage, the wholesale butchery of women and children, the deadly barges in the Loire. There was talk of bringing Carrier himself to trial. And it came to Chauvelin that here at last was something he could do.

A few of the deputies sent _en mission_ to the provinces had behaved like absolute maniacs: Carrier drowning people in Nantes, Collot d'Herbois and Fouché lining people up in front of cannons in Lyon, Le Bon sending half the Somme to the guillotine. Their crimes disgraced the Republic. Theirs was, perhaps, the corruption Robespierre had meant to purge from the Convention; in his paranoia he had made a fatal error by refusing to name the conspirators, and Tallien and Fouché had capitalized on the ambiguity to bring him down. But something still needed to be done about Carrier.

Chauvelin’s record as a spycatcher might be somewhat lackluster, but he was very, very good at compiling evidence against Frenchmen.

So it was that on a mild evening late in Vendémiaire he was sitting down to an early dinner outside the Café Hollandais, weary but satisfied after a long afternoon giving testimony before the Revolutionary Tribunal, when a stranger came up to his table and accosted him in a voice that for three months he had heard only in his dreams.

“My dear Monsieur Chambertin!”

Chambertin looked up, startled, to find a nondescript bourgeois in an unfashionable gray coat. The man looked to be in late middle age, with deep lines around his nose and mouth and streaks of gray peppering his mousy hair. He was beginning to run to fat; a trace of jowls softened the strong line of his chin. A prosperous merchant perhaps, or a country lawyer: the cut of his clothes betrayed him as a provincial, perhaps come to the capital on business. Only Blakeney’s deep-set blue eyes peering out from the plump face – for of course it was he – betrayed the illusion.

For a moment Chauvelin sat stunned. To find Blakeney here in the center of Paris, standing beneath the golden guillotine on the café’s sign as if he were not still the most wanted man in France! Then he gathered his wits and tried to leap up from his chair, but he found the motion arrested. A hand on his wrist bound him to the table as immovably as an iron manacle.

“Don’t get up,” said Blakeney. “Your reputation isn’t what it was, and my papers – that is to say, the papers of Charles Dufour, respectable citizen of Compiègne – are perfectly in order. If you summon the National Guard I fear the only result will be to convince them you’ve finally cracked, which will be embarrassing for us both, especially when you did such good service in the Salle de la Liberté earlier today.”

This was unfortunately true. Chauvelin himself could barely discern the features of the dashing young English daredevil beneath the mask of the stolid French burgher. He stood absolutely no chance of convincing anyone else. There was the brand, of course, but the days were past when he could order a random citizen taken from the street and stripped. Reluctantly, he subsided back in his chair.

Blakeney beamed at him and took the seat opposite.

“Besides, I’d hate to interrupt your dinner. You look like you need it. What is that, civet of hare? Civet of civet?” He pulled a bone out of the stew and sucked on it thoughtfully. “Might be hare, at that.”

“Why are you here, Sir Percy?” Chauvelin asked, with what he felt was admirable calm, under the circumstances.

“Oh, I thought I might look in and see how my dear old friend Monsieur Chambertin was getting on. Imagine my surprise to find him the key witness for the prosecution!”

Blakeney smiled brightly at him. Perhaps it was just that Charles Dufour had an honest face, but Chauvelin had the oddest feeling that for once the emotion was genuine. If he didn’t know better, he would almost have said that Blakeney was _proud_ of him, which was a thought too hideously embarrassing to contemplate.

“In truth, I’m very glad to find you at the bar and not in the dock,” Blakeney went on. “You have killed rather a lot of people. If your countrymen decided you should stand trial for it, I don’t know that I should feel quite right snatching you from the hands of justice.”

Chauvelin snorted. “You’ve never had a qualm about interfering with French justice before.”

Blakeney’s bright laugh rang out across the square. Chauvelin was horrified to realize he’d actually missed it.

“My dear sir, the question did not arise!”

“Hogwash. Those aristos you rescued were traitors, and you well know it.”

Blakeney laughed again. “What, according to the evidence of the revolutionary tribunals?”

“According to the evidence of your own eyes, Sir Percy! No sooner did you bring them to England then they began agitating for war between our countries – a war, I may add, which we are now in the thick of, and which you may be assured will claim more lives than ever the Terror did.”

“A war declared by France,” Blakeney pointed out dryly.

“And instigated by Britain. I was the ambassador to London at the time – I know the absurd ultimatums we were given.” Chauvelin sniffed and decided a change of topic was in order. “I don’t know why you should be so surprised to find me testifying before the Revolutionary Tribunal. I’ve done it often enough before.”

“It’s the nature of the defendant that surprised me. When we met in Nantes I seem to recall we found ourselves on opposite sides.”

“I was no friend of Carrier’s even then. But if there were excesses committed in our eagerness to safeguard the national interest, they were the business of Frenchmen to correct, and not the concern of a foreign spy.”

“Took your time about it, though, didn’t you? Rather hard luck for those poor fellows in the Loire. No, I can’t accept that, my dear Chambertin. That innocents should be abandoned to the bloodthirsty whims of the mob, until the Convention in its infinite wisdom should think better of it–!”

“And what do you suppose is happening now? Gangs of fops roaming the streets and beating good patriots to death!” Chauvelin jerked his head toward a group of muscadins strolling along a nearby colonnade, idly twirling their gnarled walking sticks. “You must be loving this.”

“Peculiar though the notion might seem to you, I’d rather there weren’t mobs of any political stripe beating people to death,” Blakeney said mildly. “All this bloodshed is really quite unnecessary for democracy, you know. We’ve had one for five hundred years without chopping anyone’s head off.”

“Anyone’s,” Chauvelin echoed flatly. “Anyone’s at all?”

“Well, yes, all right, we beheaded one king,” allowed Blakeney. “But we were very sorry afterwards and we never did it again.”

“We’re not planning to do it again either,” Chauvelin said, smiling sharply. “We don’t plan to have any kings left to behead. But you call that a democracy! All the world knows that the seats in your Parliament are up for sale to the highest bidder. I believe Lord Hawkesbury bought his son _two_ , as a surety.”

“Perhaps in time you’ll show us how to do it better.” Blakeney was gazing at him with a thoughtfulness that make Chauvelin’s stomach flutter uncomfortably, until he realized the man was actually staring at his neck.

“Oh, name of a dog,” Chauvelin snarled, hastily unknotting his cravat from his neck and thrusting it at Blakeney. “ _Here_ , if it will make you happy. Just get on with it.”

Blakeney pulled his chair closer and turned Chauvelin slightly to the side, carefully positioning him to the best advantage of the fading light. He had not troubled to disguise his hands; the respectable citizen of Compiègne was graced with the same strong, elegant fingers that had so often interfered with Chauvelin’s neckwear, and which had latterly been found locked around his throat.

They brushed against Chauvelin’s bare skin in a way that Chauvelin felt was entirely unnecessary for the business of tying a cravat, especially when one of them cupped his cheek and lingered there. He knew Blakeney could see his throat move as he swallowed, and there was a flush in his cheeks that he dearly hoped was hidden by the gathering dusk. But Blakeney’s eyes remained fixed upon his work, and after a few more folds and tucks he gave the knot a final tug and briskly announced that the masterpiece was finished.

“I declare you the most perfectly cravatted man in France. When you return for the evening session the Tribunal won’t know what to make of you.”

“Dare I ask what you’ve done with it?” Chauvelin asked warily. He could still feel the ghost of Blakeney’s fingers against his cheek. Perhaps it was only a trick of the dying light, but he thought there was a warmth in Blakeney’s lazy blue eyes that he could not remember seeing there before. Though perhaps it had been there all along, if only he had thought to look.

“Why, I’ve tied it just as you had it before, my dear Chambertin! Only, this time it’s actually on straight. You had it tilted too far to the left.”

**Author's Note:**

> [ _The Art of Tying the Cravat_](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/58166/58166-h/58166-h.htm), which lends its title to this fic.
> 
> Keen students of history may notice a few infelicities in the timeline. To them I would gently point out that the Committee of Public Safety exists in October of 1792 in _The Scarlet Pimpernel_.


End file.
